Fallon's Tractors & Truffles features local chefs, farmers, food, wine and music

Sep. 19, 2012

Top: An Allis-Chalmers tractor restored by the Frey family of Churchill Vineyards will be displayed at Saturday's Tractors & Truffles food, wine and music event in Fallon. Left: Mark Estee of Campo is the guest chef at the event. Above: Melons from Lattin Farms of Fallon are among the local ingredients being used to prepare the Tractors & Truffles dinner being served at long tables in Fallon's Oats Park. / Photos by Rachel Mosley/For the RGJ

A vintage Allis-Chalmers tractor, owned and restored by the Frey family of Fallon's Churchill Vineyards, will be displayed in the city's Oats Park as part of Tractors & Truffles, an annual event showcasing Fallon's agricultural attractions and Oats Park Art Center. The event includes a farm-to-table dinner in the park, followed by a roots music concert in the center. / Rachel Mosley/For the Reno Gazette-Journal

Steve Hernandez, chef-owner of the Slanted Porch restaurant in Fallon, checks herbs in his greenhouse. Hernandez, son of a Fallon ranching family, is helping to make the Tractors & Truffles dinner using local produce, beef, pork and lamb / l

Ashley Frey, of the Frey family that owns Fallon's Churchill Vineyards, punches down red wine grape skins, stems and seeds into the fermenting juice. Tractors & Truffles features a tour and tasting of the vineyards and winery. / photos by rachel Mosley/For the RGJ

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At Tractors & Truffles, the farm is literally coming to the table.

The annual event celebrates Fallon’s agricultural heritage and its Oats Park Art Center. “Tractors” refers to the vintage farm equipment displayed during a local foods dinner held in the park. “Truffles” refers to a musical “sweet” — in this case, an Art Center performance by the Defibulators, a leading band in the modern roots music scene.

In past years, Fallon farmers have supplied ingredients for the dinner and played host to Tractors & Truffles participants at their farms, but they haven’t been specifically featured at the dinner.

This year, “we are inviting farmers and producers of all that is being prepared to have dinner with us so guests can interact, ask questions, get insights and make more of a connection to the food that is being eaten,” said Rick Gray, executive director of the Fallon Convention & Tourism Authority, which is presenting the Sept. 22 event.

After Tractors 2011 in which a well-known chef hauled food all the way from the California wine country to Fallon, the move to bring the farmers to dinner, organizers said, was part of a larger effort to make the event as local as possible.

Guest chef

Loosening things up is part of this return to local.

The 100 or so folks who attend the dinner will take their seats at long tables instead of rounds for eight, as in past years. Plated courses — “Nice, but boring,” Gray said — are being replaced by “heapings of fresh food on platters that must be passed around and shared.” Great Basin Brewing Co.’s Ichthyosaur ale is being served in Mason jars.

And Mark Estee of Campo, known for his precise yet unstuffy take on Italian food, is this year’s guest chef. Estee is joining chef Steve Hernandez, owner of Fallon’s Slanted Porch restaurant and member of a local ranching family, to shop for and prepare the dinner.

What drew Estee to Fallon?

“The fact is, we use so many products from Fallon, and I really wanted to celebrate all that they bring to the table,” Estee said. “I have relationships with a few of the farmers and ranchers, but I really wanted to expand to meet many more.”

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Beef, pork, lamb

Dinner begins with a mosaic of produce — squash, eggplant, pepper, tomatoes, the last of the sweet corn — from Latin Farms and Workman Farms of Fallon. Herbs are coming from Salisha’s Delicious, also of Fallon.

“We’re going to pick everything that morning,” Hernandez said of the produce. “Some will be roasted, some will be grilled, some will be lightly tossed with vinaigrette.”

Protein takes pride of place at the dinner. Beef short ribs from Fallon rancher Mark Venturacci are being braised to lusty richness. Pig is being sourced from Behimer Livestock of Fallon, lamb from rancher Joe Ricci of Dayton Valley.

Both the pig and lamb are being used to make versions of porchetta, the Italian classic in which the animal is gutted, deboned, stuffed (for Tractors & Truffles, with sausage made from its entrails), then rolled and roasted.

For dessert, think chilled Lattin Farms melon soup set with a cheese quenelle from Sand Hill Farmstead Cheese — of Fallon, of course.

“This is really straightforward,” Hernandez said of the meal. “Get up and make dinner for 100. I’m really excited this year about how local the dinner is.”

Many melons

Tractors & Truffles showcases other food and drink attractions.

The day starts at certified organic Lattin Farms, which the Lattin family has been working for more than 100 years.

Participants will tour the farm: arched hoop houses sheltering peppers, yellow tomatoes and herbs; crews picking raspberries and beans; another hoop house with a trial crop of fussy Cherokee heirlooms grafted to disease-resistant rootstock; and a stand of broom corn adjacent to the farm’s tapering vintage pump house.

“Fifty years ago, all brooms were made out of this,” Lattin said the other afternoon, pointing toward the broom corn. “You’d cut off the heads and dry them. They were used before plastic.”

And don’t forget melons, which will star at a farm lunch and at a cooking demonstration by Estee.

They rose in jumbles the other afternoon in the farm store. Snow leopards, Sarah’s choice, lil’ loupe (a single-serving melon), hearts of gold, and lambkin melons mottled yellow and green. In Spanish, this melon is called piel de sapo — skin of the toad.

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“When I was in Belize last year, every market had them,” Lattin said. “They typically haven’t been grown in the States. The flesh is pale. When it gets riper, it’s almost translucent. This will be on our melon platter at lunch.”

Estate wines

After Lattin Farms but before events in Oats Park and the Art Center — cocktails, dinner, Defibulators concert — Tractors & Truffles participants will have a tour and tasting at Churchill Vineyards. The winery is part of the ranch owned by the Frey family, longtime Fallon farmers.

In fact, Churchill Vineyards is the only Nevada winery to produce estate wine. The ranch’s warm days, cool nights, and altitude of 4,000 feet have proven friendly to these white varietals.

Tractors & Truffles also is featuring a first-time Churchill Vineyards release: its ’09 reserve cabernet sauvignon, of which 415 cases were produced.

“We have partnered with a Napa grower from St. Helena, Calif.,” Frey said. “We are excited for people to come out and taste it and all our other wines. It’s wonderful when people can visit and make a direct connection with agriculture.”